Photography Class Day 4

I wandered around taking pictures of  shooting random stuff this week, trying to find a shot that "rocked it" for my homework.  Everything I shot looked too stuffy, too posed, too "not me."  I pretty much gave up until Thursday night when I started feeling my internal homework clock ticking loudly!  

After an already super-full day, nothing looked very interesting at 10:39 on a Thursday night. I walked up and down the stairs and through the entire house looking for something...anything to take a picture of, and became increasingly irritated at the little pile of Mack's belongings that I kept tripping over.  

And then I wandered into his room and heard him peacefully snoring in his bed and thought that there won't be many more years of tripping over his stuff.  (Actually, the reality is probably that there will be a handful of years in the immediate future where the stuff I trip over will be bigger than this little pile...but eventually there won't be stuff to trip over in my house.) And eventually all these little people who get bigger everyday, and more mature everyday, and move closer everyday toward lives OUT of this house, will actually BE out of this house, and so will all their little piles of stuff.  

SO, for a few quiet moments on Thursday night, I decided to embrace the pile on the floor and capture it.  So that someday when my floors are uncluttered and my home is quiet, I can look at these and remember how much I loved the activity and commotion of a busy family.

I don't have a tripod, so I stacked a pile of books on the floor, and got down at eye level to take these.  I set the white balance at INCANDESCENT and then COOL WHITE FLUORESCENT (both of which were still a little off) and set the ISO at 100, which meant that I needed a WIDE aperture (4.2) and a slow shutter speed (I think these were at 1" and 2")

Have I mentioned how much fun I'm having playing around with this camera?  I still can only shoot things that don't move.  There isn't time to go through all those settings with people who are in motion.  But I LOVE that I feel like I'm actually using the abilities this camera came with.  I'm totally enjoying this photography class!